In Brief, August 2010
• The traditional Le Mans Test Day will return to the calendar next season after an absence of two years. The event, cancelled for 2009 after the economic crisis hit, will take place in late April or early May. The ACO said it was vital for the Test Day to return in what would be the first year for the new prototype rulebook.
• BMW’s Alpina B6 (left) looks set to join the Championship in FIA GT1 World Championship in 2011. Aurora Racing Designs, which is behind the GT3 version of the car racing this year, has been commissioned to develop a GT1 B6 for potential customers.
• Kimi Raikkonen took on multiple trials bike champion Taddy Blazusiak in a head-to-head race in Austria. The ex-F1 driver and the Polish enduro rider tackled a 13km stage, which Kimi won in his Citroen C4 WRC. Blazusiak, who was riding his KTM trials bike, had to wash the C4 as a forfeit.
• Audi DTM driver Mattias Ekstrom was due to start his first NASCAR Sprint Cup race on June 18 at Sonoma, after Motor Sport closed for press. The Swede, who tested Brian Vickers’ Red Bull car in early June, was set to become the first Scandinavian to contest NASCAR’s top level after Vickers pulled out due to health reasons.
• The Le Mans entry list swelled to 56 cars ahead of the race when the ACO decided the only car on the reserve list, a Swiss-entered Radical, should start. It would have been the first time that more than 55 cars had started the race since 1955, but a heavy crash for the second AF Corse Ferrari in qualifying reduced the total.
• Plans for an extra round of the World Touring Car Championship in China to replace the cancelled Mexican event have been shelved. Series boss Marcello Lotti said a race in China was top priority” for 2011.
• Alain Prost and Sebastien Loeb will star in the Race of Champions at Dusseldorf on November 27/28, competing together in the Nations Cup. Although WRC champion Loeb has raced in the RoC before, it will be Prost’s first appearance. “In the past the dates have always clashed with other commitments,” he said. “This year it finally works.”